The Book of Flora (The Road to Nowhere, #3)

by Meg Elison

And there is one thing I know is true in this world: only what is remembered survives. Only what is written has a chance in the future. People forget. Rivers rise. Stories and songs are snuffed out every time some town takes a fever or loses to a man with a little power.

Destruction is common. Creation is rare.

In my experience, a crop that is grown for anything but food or clothing is a luxury, and luxury does not exist without slavery.

I didn’t choose to become a slaver, but I was made one. By the time I had ten summers behind me, I knew the job well enough to do it on my own. I didn’t know each of them was their own person, a soul, a being with its own destiny and desires, because I did not know that was true of myself.

I have come to measure every town and village by whether they keep books and how well they keep them.

Do we decide what we like? Is it born in us, or is it different if you have seen different things? Do we like what we saw growing up? What our mothers liked? Is there a day that comes and goes when we decide what we like, now and forever?

What do you call it when you wish you could take someone else’s problem? Not only to help them, but to help yourself. I don’t think there is such a word.

Don’t give up who you are for a soft bed.”

All we do is lose. I badly want to have someone in my life whom I never have to lose. Never have to say goodbye to and mean it. Never have to take one last look, not knowing whether it really is the last. Is that even possible? It isn’t. We’re all going to leave and die. But does it always have to be so soon?

People will believe anything if you don’t teach them how to reason for themselves.

It’s not just women who have to worry. It’s anyone who isn’t a man.”

Coincidence, she thought. The things we see too many times, and the things we only see once. That’s what we make into religion. Those are the things we have to struggle to explain, so we make something up.

“I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had this fight. If women are obligated to have children, then we may as well be in chains.”

The more people in a group, the more complicated things become. There’s no way around that, it seems.

But time and again we come back to the question of whether we can attempt to control anything people do with their own bodies that doesn’t hurt anyone else.

I can’t ever tell them how I came to be who I am, but I can tell the stories. I can show them the scars. I can explain what I have seen in the world, and how strange it is. And then it will become part of them. Isn’t that what all Mothers do?

I used to think that the losses in my life would slow down or maybe cease, that I wouldn’t always be mourning and saying goodbye. But the older I get, the more constant that state becomes.

I feel old. I suppose that makes sense. I’m older now than I’ve ever been. But I feel old in the way that means there is nothing ahead.

The young have no idea the kind of pain and degradation that await. It’s just as well. It would be hard to go on at all if you knew what the end of the line looked like. My prize for fighting, for not dying all those times, is a broken heart and very dry skin.

That’s why you couldn’t love yourself. Is that what all this is about? Are you just taking your own pain and spreading it around, rather than finding a way to love and be loved?